Malibu morning picture of the day - Monday, April 28, 2014

Happy Monday everybody. Hope you had a good weekend. For some reason the usual parking lot shots didn't save. I did snap off some pictures of the deer family that grazes on the front lawn.

The sky was basically cloudless this morning, so had the exposure saved it would have been the blue-on-blue that I've posted at least once before. I learned this morning that the auto-focus on my phone camera doesn't do so good in mid-range. As I approached the deer and took a few more, things just got blurry. I maybe need to hold still too.

Here's the mama deer with little guy. It is a young one, it's not just farther away.

Here's the group together. There are a few more outside of the frame down the hill. Mother -and-child thoughts are on my mind this morning. Someone close to me (a first-degree female relative) said they have their first baby on the way. Exciting news and a change of life and perspective for them. Blessings.

My youngest is 21, and like many of her generation, delayed getting her driver's license. She got it. I consider that the culminating act of my role as a supporting parent. When the nest empties out, what's next? Watch this space.

And of course, you mask bad photography by using all that edit-picture stuff that software gives you. Isn't this cheesy?

I took a quick drive down to San Diego to go watch an IMAX movie called Journey to the South Pacific just to see if it could give me any context for my mythical Dog Island in my book. Unfortunately it was more about the tropical fish and turtles in the reef around the islands of West Papua. I'm really more interested in the people and the way of life there--the only human depictions were smiling happy brown people chopping up coconuts and little kids playing in the lagoon. Oh well, it should help the tropical fish store business. Guess I just have to go there and spend time. (In case you haven't figured it out, my story, at least the Dog Island part, is my riff on the cliche desert island gag.)

Rain was predicted for Saturday, but this was all that was in the sky on the way down. This was taken from the rest stop on the Camp Pendleton property between north San Diego County and South Orange County.






After I got out of the theatre at about 5 PM there were a lot of clouds in the sky. They had the effect of giving you very silvery light. This picture really captures how I felt about the scene.
They were prepping for some festival the next day.

This covered walkway gave an entirely different mood just a few steps over.

Sadly, I could not think of anything else I wanted to do in San Diego, so I just came back. I stopped by a hotel in Downey to look at some koi. Someone told me about this amazing indoor pond. I have an interest in koi because I intend to include them in a painting I have planned to do one of these days. According Chinese legend, koi are the nymph stage of a developing dragon. Sorry about the blurriness--again, I am just learning how to use this camera phone. That's all for today.

Love,
Pops